Control
by amandajbruce
Summary: Fitz comes face to face with Loreli, and struggles to keep himself in control.


"So this is your… what did you call this?" Loreli looked at the huge item in front of her. It was the size of a home for a relatively large Asgardian family. It was all metal though. Dark and mysterious. It looked like some sort of giant bird.

"The bus. It's a plane." At her furrowed brow and confused eyes, Ward clarified. "It can fly us anywhere in the world we want to go."

"Oh. I do like that." Her expression turned from one of curiosity and confusion to self-satisfaction. The smirk that crossed her face warmed him, even as somewhere deep inside of him, there was a small piece trying to tell himself that he was making a mistake, that he was putting his team in danger.

-o-

Fitz examined the metal ring in front of him. Everything looked in order, but he wouldn't know for sure until Lady Sif examined it. It's not like whatever passed for the Asgardian version of science was the same here on Earth. He turned at the sound of the air hissing through the opening door. Thinking it was the SHIELD team returning with news of Loreli's capture, he held the metal ring in the air to show it off, only to find himself face to face with Ward and Loreli. Not another agent in sight. And no Lady Sif.

"Um, hello." Fitz slowly dropped his arm, but his fingers still closed around the ring in his hand. Tightly. Protectively. Ward didn't look any different than he had the day before. His face looked a little more relaxed, if anything, but he was pretty sure that was a façade.

"Fitz, this is Loreli," Ward gestured to the woman next to him. "She's going to fill you in on the plan while I reroute the plane."

"Reroute? Plan? What?" Fitz sputtered as Ward left him alone in the lab with the Asgardian woman whose voice was supposed to strip him of all his free will. "Ward?" Fitz called out, but there was no response from the other man.

Loreli strolled by one lab table, her eyes floating around the room, flitting from one piece of equipment to the next. Humans had such odd machinery. "I wanted him to kill you, you know. I did not think I was in need of a man so… small." A strangled sound emerged from Fitz's throat, but he didn't say anything. He wanted to protest, but he also didn't want to make this woman angry. Who knew what she could make him do? "Grant seems to be particularly attached to you. He did not like my instructions, saying that you would be a great asset to me. Will you?"

"Um…" Fitz still couldn't make himself form any words.

He wasn't nodding his head either, but god, if her presence wasn't completely intoxicating. He was starting to wonder how anyone could even be in the same room with the Asgardian sorceress. His brain was suddenly filled with thoughts of her being the smartest, the prettiest, woman he'd ever seen. What he really wanted to know was how exactly she could affect him like this. Ward didn't seem tongue tied around her. Then again, the other agent had been with her for an entire day now. And he had been with her in open air. Maybe it was the confined space of the lab, all those pheromones weren't reaching the ventilation system quickly enough. Simmons would probably be able to figure out the exact biochemical reaction that was going on.

Loreli cocked her head to one side, waiting for an answer as she glided toward him. She sniffed experimentally, allowing all of her senses to focus on the man in front of her. She thought he would be weak, but he seemed to be able to hold up a modicum of resistance to her voice, just like his friend. It was curious. His scent was not the one overpowering her in this little room either. There was a woman who was usually in here. She smelled of something simple. Lavender. Maybe that's why he was able to resist.

_Simmons._

Fitz felt his head clear, if only a tiny bit. Simmons and Skye were in their makeshift hospital ward. Simmons was running yet another test on Skye. And if she came back up to the lab with a vial of blood, Loreli would probably want to get rid of her. He preferred not to imagine how. He had a feeling he wouldn't like it, but he wouldn't be able to stop it. He watched Loreli. Her glide had turned into a saunter. She was all swinging hips and bedroom eyes, and it was a lot of pheromones to have aimed at him. He was most definitely not used to this. But he tried to hold out.

"I- I'm highly intelligent. I can help. With things." His attempt at a reason to keep him alive quickly devolved into an incoherent babble. "I – you know, for you. And, um. What?" He turned his head to the side as though someone else was talking to him, then lunged for the fire extinguisher he and Simmons stored in the lab. The fire extinguisher always seemed to work for his lab partner. He thought if he could just momentarily stun her with it, he could slip the collar on, and everything would be fine. But he was too slow. Or Loreli was too fast. She was quite suddenly in front of him, blocking his access to the fire extinguisher, one hand loosely wrapped around his wrist, ensuring he would not be able to collar her either.

"What does that red tube do?" She inquired curiously. She had seen the way his line of site had gravitated to the object right before he moved. Loreli believed it was some sort of weapon, but she couldn't quite grasp what it was for. She had never seen anything like it.

"It – uh – puts out fires?" Fitz's voice squeaked a little on the last word, and he hated himself for it. He was a scientist. He did not give in to his baser instincts. Much.

"And am I on fire?" She practically purred the words at him.

He didn't know if she knew that 'on fire' could actually mean many different things here on Earth, but again Fitz fought down an urge to answer her. He cleared his throat, but didn't struggle against her grip.

"What is your name?" Loreli cocked her head to the side again, observing him through heavy lidded eyes. She knew his name. Grant had told her about the team already. She wanted to hear him say it though. For all his stammering and shaking, he still wasn't exactly doing as she asked, or answering her thoroughly, and she wanted to know why. She pressed her fingers more fully against the pulse points on his wrists after her question. Not enough to alarm him, but enough to try and get a read on him. His heart was beating at an astonishing rate. Like one of those little furry creatures that she'd seen in the desert, living in a constant state of fear, blood pumping as fast as it could through his system without destroying it. Something about the way his eyes darted to and from the glass door though made her think that his fear was not for himself. It was likely for whomever the scent of lavender belonged to.

"Fitz." It was a harmless enough answer. Not his entire name, but the name that everyone called him. Not enough words to cause another attack of the stammering, nervous part of his brain that she seemed to be working to bend to her will. But it was enough to satisfy her.

"Fitz." The way the name rolled from her tongue was like magic. No one else said his name like that.

"Yes." He swallowed hard, trying desperately to remember that Simmons and Skye were not far away, and he could not, under any circumstances, allow Loreli to get to them. His will was rapidly evaporating though. When this was over, he was going to have a long talk with Simmons about creating a chemical compound to combat whatever it was that Loreli was doing to him.

"Did you fix my collar?" She gave him a languid smile, the kind a woman would give a man when waking up next to him after a particularly raucous night. That wasn't a look he had often had aimed at him before. This entire experience was surreal.

He knew that look was part of her act, but the hormone ridden part of his mind couldn't help but respond to it. He clenched his teeth and tried not to answer, but his head nodded for him. He didn't like this. At all. The only person in his entire life he had not been able to lie to was Simmons, but Loreli was invading every part of his mind and he couldn't control himself.

"You're not going to try to put it on me again though, are you? You're going to help Grant and I escape?" She decreased the pressure of her fingers on his wrists, stroking his skin lightly instead. Her gift didn't usually require quite this much skin to skin contact, and it was beginning to worry her. She'd never met anyone who could resist her for quite this long. It made her think that this one might be just as special as Grant. She leaned in a little closer, her eyes locking on his, taking one deep breath and releasing it slowly. She watched in satisfaction as every muscle in his face went slack. His eyes darkened, his breathing went shallow, and she watched his pale skin flush in a tell-tale sign of human male arousal.

Maybe not as special as she thought.

"Yes." Fitz cleared his throat again. "Of course I'll help you." He nodded his head like an eager puppy, eyes widening, a grin spreading. "Anything you need." And he did mean anything. He very suddenly wanted absolutely nothing else in the world but to keep the woman in front of him happy. For all his pushing and burying the feelings she evoked, he couldn't stop it.

"Good." Loreli straightened up, releasing him completely. "Where are the rest of your people? Grant told me there were more."

Though an internal voice that sounded suspiciously like Simmons was telling him to shut up, Fitz responded quickly with that puppy dog expression on his face. "Oh, they're down in our medi-pod. Got it when Skye was bad-off. She's better now though."

"I need you to get rid of them so that no one gets in Grant's way." She saw it in his eyes as she spoke. A split second where the color in his eyes wasn't quite as dark, and when he took a breath it wasn't quite as shallow. The idea of going after the others was enough to give him pause. Loreli stood to her full height, reached one hand forward, and gently cupped his cheek. "Make it happen. For me. Now." With men like this, it was best to be direct. She couldn't give him time to think about his options. "And Fitz? When Lady Sif returns to the plane, I need you to keep her out of my way."

Fitz tripped over his own two feet in his haste to get to Skye and Simmons. His quick trip to the hall just outside the portable hospital room allowed a brief moment for his overwhelming need to please Loreli to abate just enough for him to realize that Loreli had not specified how he was supposed to 'get rid of' the other members of the team. She didn't say he had to kill them. That meant he didn't have to hurt them. Instead, Fitz, with a sigh of relief, wedged a rod into the door, making sure that neither of the women could leave. Neither of them glanced up from the discussion they were having on the bed. He was sure Skye was arguing with Simmons about wanting to get up and move around some more. Again.

Fitz let out another sigh. Loreli was really amazing, the best, but he couldn't risk Simmons and Skye getting hurt because of her. Just as much as he couldn't risk them stopping Loreli from getting to whatever her destination was. All he had to do was keep them out of the way until Loreli got what she wanted, and everything would be just fine.

-o-

"I'm not weak you know," Fitz snapped, gingerly prodding the rapidly forming bruise on his face. He knew he should probably be more concerned with the fact that Coulson wanted to speak with Skye alone, again, but the idea of Simmons finding him to be weak was not sitting well with him at all.

"Fitz, I told you. It isn't just you. For the last time, it's all men. It can't be helped. It's science. I imagine Loreli has some sort of concentrated dose of the same pheromones women release when they're ovulating. She's likely able to aim them at a specific target, dose them with a particular amount, unlike human females." Simmons shook her head, then jumped as a door slammed somewhere above them. "Hmm… I do hope Ward's alright."

"But what if it could be helped?" Fitz cut in front of her, halting her from getting too far from him. "There has to be a scientific explanation for why Loreli only affects men, yeah? And for why I held out for so long." He rocked back on his heels, attempting not to look exceedingly proud of himself. But now that his head was clear of the Asgardian's influence, he was pretty proud.

"You held out?" Jemma's interest peaked, she eyed him with more concern than she had before. "How? For how long?"

"Well, I mean, I don't really know how I did it, exactly. But she kept asking me questions, and I did my best not to answer. Her voice didn't work as well as it was supposed to. It took her a good five minutes to get me to do anything for her, she had to touch me, and I didn't even do what she wanted me to do." His discomfort broke through as he scratched the back of his neck and eyed the ground in front of his feet.

"She touched you?" Jemma paused, but let that slide, not really wanting too much detail into that. "What did she want you to do?" Fitz didn't answer her, his eyes staying downcast, but Jemma had a feeling she knew. "Did she – I mean, was it an order?"

Fitz sucked in a breath and nodded his head. "She made it perfectly clear that I was to do as she asked."

"And you didn't?"

"Not exactly."

"Curious." Simmons shuffled around him, heading for the comforting white noise of the lab and all its machinery. She began mumbling about chemical compounds and biological reactions and hormone levels under her breath. "Another stronger dose of pheromones might be able to – but how would we know what was stronger? Body chemistry is different for everyone… Could we target specific hormone reactions? Dangerous to introduce it directly to the nervous system… I'd have to test it… Fitz would be the only viable candidate that I know of. Maybe the region of his brain that processes attraction has developed differently?"

"Hey, my brain has developed perfectly fine, thank you very much!"

Simmons didn't seem to hear him, and her mumbling continued. "Maybe if the male body is already tuned in to another female's pheromone levels, it reacts slower? But that doesn't make any sense…"

"Simmons?" Fitz whipped his head around, watching the way she walked and gestured as though working out a difficult math problem in her mind. "Uh, Jemma?" He hurried after her. "Can you put something on my eye before we start working on a way to combat Asgardian pheromone doses?"

-o-

* * *

**A/N: I kind of forgot I had this on my computer, and I thought I'd go ahead and post it before the next new episode airs. I still don't particularly like how the show handled Loreli's influence on Ward, with seemingly no one concerned for his psychological well being after having someone invade his mind, and that prompted me to wonder how Fitz would have initially reacted to Loreli. I feel like, as a scientist, he would have been intent on finding a way to make sure it never happened again, though I doubt we would see the same storyline play out on the show again. And it really surprised me that Simmons was not all over a scientific reason for why Loreli could do what she did. So, this very tiny moment came to mind. Hope you guys enjoyed!**


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